


The Road Not Traveled

by quixotic221



Category: Benedict Cumberbatch-Fandom, British Actor RPF, Real Person Fiction, Sherlock (TV) RPF
Genre: Angst, Angst and More Angst, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Inspired by Music, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 09:53:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1644542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixotic221/pseuds/quixotic221
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Benedict and Dara were best friends ever since they met in college. They have had no contact with each other for the past two years, until tonight. It's Ben's 37th birthday, and he gets a message from Dara through a song that threatens to unravel everything Ben has been holding on to, since she left his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road Not Traveled

**Author's Note:**

> This is a snippet of a scene for a larger story I'm creating. Please leave comments of encouragement if you would like to read more about these characters. This is my very first foray into Fan Fiction, so feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Ben swings open the silver car door and slides into the black leather seat. He exhales letting out the scent of one too many birthday cocktails, a mix of scotch and shots of bourbon. The seclusion of his car allows him to disintegrate his mask of thank yous, small talk chatter, and forced laughter of a birthday celebrant. All for a crowd of people he could care less about.  He pauses, inhales deeply. In one swift motion, faster than his mind can process, preventing the possibility of hesitation, he opens the glove compartment. His eyes sweep over the front of the tan envelope. Its mundane appearance is flourished by the delicate handwriting on the front bearing his name and address.  The contrast of her tenderness and willfulness, was on full display in the script. He rips open the top of the envelope, spilling the contents on the passenger seat next to him.

Out falls a CD case. He recalled a time, when they would exchange these regularly. They used to joke, that they wanted to compose the soundtrack to each other’s lives.  A yellow post it note with a few words is attached on the outside cover of the case. She never did write long letters to him, even when there was so much left unsaid. But she knew he would only need the music to understand everything. Even after two-years of their radio silence, his stubborn avoidance of her, it seems she still trusted their deep closeness to know that he would understand everything she wanted to say, without saying it.

He lets the CD slide into the dashboard.

Last year, the gentleman at the Jaguar dealership almost laughed at Ben when instead of asking for more horsepower, or an upgraded interior, insisted that it had to have a CD player. The car dealer didn’t know and couldn’t understand. Throughout Ben and Dara’s ten year history of close friendship, which came precipitously close to being something much more, music was their secret language. The songs they chose for each other held meaning and context which only they would understand. Two years ago, Ben refused to jump over the cliff to become something infinitely more to Dara. Now sitting alone in his car, waiting in nervous anticipation for the song to play, he couldn’t fathom what reason was good enough to hold him back from leaping. Then again, retrospect always made it difficult to comprehend the road traveled. But living with the reality of his decision for the past two years, he couldn’t imagine a possibility that could have been worse than the one that he’d forced upon himself.

He braces himself and the song starts at first gently, like soft lapping water on the side of boat, a lull, letting him relax his body into the cold leather seat. A lone guitar strums, slow, bluesy, emotional strumming. In the pauses, the stillness of the melody, the sound of faint laughter seeps into the seals of this car window. Through the steel beams of the car, the chatter and revelry diffusing from the party he left, threatened to invade the solitude he wanted and needed so desperately in this moment.

He closes his eyes. Never before has he so palpably felt the stark contrast of the life he was pretending to relish and enjoy, and the reality of his truth, the part of himself he’s buried in the past, forgotten, or so he thought. The slowness, echoes the mood.

_So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain?_

_Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?_

The voice asks him a question _._ He feels its insinuation, mocking him. The question marks at the end of each painfully sung line, feel more like an exclamation, punctuating, punching through something, somewhere inside him. A place he so laboured to make invisible and non-existent, he now realizes was all in vain.  

He opens his eyes. He looks down at the envelope, the note, on the case, “For Ben”. He traces his fingers over the black, inky, indentations on the paper, hoping to feel traces of her presence. His eyes unable avoid the note behind the case, on the seat, a card of heavy ecru card stock with gilded letters.

Mr. and Mrs. Laurel request your presence at the wedding of their daughter, Ms. Dara Laurel

His eyes turn away sharply. He felt the sting of reading on, flush on his cheeks.

_A smile from a veil?  
Do you think you can tell?_

The words pressing down on his chest, squeezing, like a vice, pulsating, and bubbling up. The heaviness leaving him no choice but to clear his throat, afraid not doing so, would let it spill out beyond him, beyond his control. He presses his eyelids down together. He refuses to let it wound him anymore. All he needs, all he wants, is to listen. Listen to the melody, searching for her. For her voice, her message.

_Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?_   
_Hot ashes for trees?_   
_Hot air for a cool breeze?_   
_Cold comfort for change?_

_Did you exchange a walk on part in a war, for a lead role in a cage?_

 

The song crashes, the words like angry, frothy waves, careening down to hit the shore. The song has betrayed him. His composure betrays him. Before he realizes it, his knuckles are pale white, forming a stark contrast to the black steering wheel they are now clenching. He wants to steady himself, steady and control the boiling over of long ignored feelings.

 

_How I wish, how I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year._

 

The song pleads. Does she plead? He’s unsure, as he’d always been. The feeling of wanting to believe, feels so foreign to him. He hasn’t wanted something in this way, since he last saw her two years ago. “The wedding of their daughter” The words flashed like a blinking hazard sign in the dark of his mind, reminding him not to be so hopeful that he becomes foolish.

He wills his right hand to loosen its tense grip on the steering wheel, just enough to allow him to reach for his phone. He dials a number he’d erased, but could not forget.

 

_Running over the same old ground._

_What have we found?_

He pauses, clenches his fist around his phone. He drops his head.  He drops his grip. He drops the phone.

_The same old fears._

_Wish you were here._

 

He’s lost now. He lost the false veil of not needing her.  He lost the hope that she didn't really matter. The mental walls he so carefully built, that seemed so impenetrable, were now tumbling down. Each brick of delusion, crashing. Amidst the rubble in his mind, only one phrase remained. One fear, he now realizes he has made come true.

He lost her.

And with that, he found himself, half past midnight, in his car, in the West Hollywood hills, in the parking lot of “the beautiful people”, screaming, gripping, shaking the wheel, yearning, angry, at all that he’d thrown away, let go. His anguish filled the cocoon of his car. Maybe if screamed enough, for long enough, he could let himself deny that he was now sobbing, cold tears flowing down his warm cheeks. All that was hidden, repressed, now breaking free, wildly spilling out, riding the steady stream from his eyes. He didn't know when he started, and didn't know if he could ever stop.


End file.
